Culture Shock Doesn’t Discriminate

Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Life
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Last Friday’s post on Culture Shock or Smooth Sailing? prompted insightful, thought-provoking comments, both on the blog and via email. Several readers asked me to write more about culture shock, so over the next few days I will be running a mini-series of posts about this well-known (yet still misunderstood) aspect of expat life.

As an aside – and because I cannot emphasize this enough: your questions are always welcome. The reason why I’m writing is to make your life abroad easier. In other words, I want to make sure that I’m writing about topics of interest to you.

If there is a subject you’d like to see addressed here, please leave a comment or send me an email. Any personal details you may share in your email will be kept strictly confidential and, as anyone who’s ever written me can tell you, I won’t try to promote anything – earning your trust is much more valuable to me than selling you a coaching session.

So if you have any questions that would make good topics for this blog, I am all ears.

And now, back to the topic at hand! If I had only one message about culture shock, it would be this:

Culture shock is a normal, natural, maybe even necessary part of living abroad.

So don’t be, well, too shocked (!) and don’t beat yourself up whenever your beliefs, behaviours or traditions happen to clash with those of your host country. It’s entirely normal, and it’s to be expected.

Culture shock doesn’t discriminate

Culture shock can happen to anyone – first-timers and veteran expats alike.

It can happen anywhere – even if all your friends are telling you you’re living in paradise.

It can happen at anytime – sometimes as soon as you leave the airport, and sometimes after living in your new country for a year or two.

Suffering from culture shock doesn’t have anything to do with being weak or strong. It doesn’t mean you’re too set in your ways or psychologically fragile.

It absolutely doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you.

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Emmanuelle

Image by Ségozyme (top) and Desirée Delgado (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons